


bound for different ports

by sealavenderinajamjar



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: AU where their paths crossed briefly, F/M, The Ark, bellarke is giving me a lot of pain at the moment so, have some wellven, it's also kind of what if-y, space, this is very raven centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 14:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6083511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sealavenderinajamjar/pseuds/sealavenderinajamjar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>three times raven heard about wells jaha + the one time she saw him</p>
            </blockquote>





	bound for different ports

**Author's Note:**

> So, Bellamy and Clarke are giving me all types of pain, but Raven and Wells give me slightly less pain so, here we are.
> 
> Title from P.D. James.

i.

The first time Raven Reyes had heard his name, she was seven years old. It had been a bad day for her mom, a nightmare full of rants and thrown objects. She had tried to escape to Finn’s compartment, but his father had stormed in and thrown her out. He had been drinking, Finn said apologetically, through the crack under his door- someone had been smuggling illegally stilled liquor up from Farming.

So Raven did what she normally did when she had nowhere else to go. She hid in the vents.

It wasn’t too bad, she thought to herself, elbows pressed against stiff metal walls, feet lazily cycling through the air as she thought about the homework she was looking forward to doing for math class. No one bothered her, she got to feel the cool blast of air whenever the pumps switched cycles, and the best thing of all, she could totally eavesdrop on the guards whenever they passed by.

She stiffened as she heard footsteps, getting louder with each breath she took. The low rumble of voices reached her ears, a man and a woman.

“I’m so sick of being stuck in this goddamn sector,” she could hear the woman saying as the footsteps got closer. “All I do is break up ration fights and assist with arrests. I’ve floated twice as many people in three months than I did in a year up in Alpha.”

“Yeah, well” the male voice laughed sardonically, and Raven had to strain to hear his lowered voice. “The privileged don’t usually have as much need to steal as the people down here do, you know what I’m saying?”

“Unless it’s each other’s partners,” the woman replied, and they both laughed. Raven didn’t quite understand why- she had only been to Alpha Station once on a class trip to see the Chancellor’s office, and from what she had seen of it, it had looked pretty much the same. Same grey walls, same boring warning signs, the same lectures when she had touched something that could potentially cause an accident. Maybe it was a little cleaner, but that wouldn’t be hard in comparison to Mecha.

“Anyway, speak of the devils” the man continued- they had stopped near Raven’s vent so she didn’t have to strain as much anymore. “Did you hear about the ruckus the Chancellors little boy caused? He and his friend- the Griffin kid, would you believe it- nearly managed to sneak out to the spacewalker station. Apparently they were going to walk to the moon.”

“That’s kind of adorable” the woman laughed. “He’s what- six?”

“Something like that. Jaha had the whole station on lockdown. I’m pretty sure he was worried that he was going to lose the heir to the throne.” The man laughed. “Of course, _that_ system isn’t rigged or anything.”

“Of course not,” the woman replied, and Raven could hear the joking in her voice. “There’s no way in hell that we’ll ever be sixty years old and bowing down to Chancellor Wells Jaha. How could you think such a thing Luke?”

“Beats me. Anyway, break’ll be finished by the time we line up for rations. Better hustle.”

Raven listened to them walk away, and then slowly she wriggled out of her vent, making sure no one was around to see her. Surely her mom would be better by now. Her moods didn’t normally go on for hours and hours. As she walked the familiar way home though, she began to think about what the guards had said about the boy who was going to be Chancellor one day. He was going to walk to the moon, he had said.

Raven stopped at one of the slit windows and hauled herself up on a nearby pipe so she could see out the top of them. Outside, space yawned back at her, full of starlight and the familiar, solid Earth, which was squarely in her view. She had to strain her neck to see the moon, peeking out from behind the Earth, glowing in the light from the Sun. What would it be like to walk there? She wondered. To float through space, with nothing but a suit between you and the stars. To go anywhere you wanted.

She jumped down and continued the slow walk home, where her mother should be sleeping and Raven would have to tidy up, in case a surprise inspection happen and the guards got nosy.

But she couldn’t stop thinking. Could she walk to the moon? Would she be allowed?

She paused in front of her front door and pressed her ear against the metal. She was still screaming, so Raven slid down and resigned herself to waiting.

One day, she vowed. One day she would walk to the moon, and beat the Chancellors son. 

After all, she was awesome.

 

ii.

Raven was eighteen and in love with a boy in a jail cell when she heard the news.

Sinclair burst into the room, startling the other mechanics working in the space- all male, all older than her, Raven despaired- and made a beeline to where she was standing, trying not to punch the engineer that had been buzzing around all afternoon and working on a new prototype for the spacewalk’s oxygen supply filter. Fascinating stuff.

“Hey Reyes, did you hear your boyfriend’s getting a new cell mate?” he said, leaning on her workstation and breaking her concentration as she tried to extract the old filter.

“Screw you,” Raven said, her heart clenching as she thought of Finn, stuck in prison because of her, because of her stupid need to see the stars up close. All her fault.

“Don’t get touchy, I’m still technically your superior,” Sinclair said, albeit slightly more gentle in his tone now. “Anyway, you’ll never guess who got arrested this morning.”

“ _I don’t care_ ,” Raven said in a sing-song voice, trying her damnedest to focus on the machinery in front of her rather than her boss gossiping like a schoolgirl.

“Fine, I’ll tell the world in general. Wells Jaha.”

The voices seemed to ring out as one. “You’re joking!” “The prince of the Ark?!” “That dork?” (Wick).

Raven was surprised to say the least. From what she had heard, Jaha Junior was practically perfect in every way. Top of his class on Alpha, a volunteer down at Farming, head of the Ark Youth Council- Raven had been asked to join, but she wasn’t one for politics. If there was a vote for ‘Least Likely to get Arrested’, he would have won it by a mile.

“What’d he do?” Murray asked, the rest of the men chiming in with their own questions as well.

“Can’t’ve been good,” Raven said. “Jaha wouldn’t put his mini-me in confinement for anything less than murder.”

“Well, he tried to murder the Last Tree,” Sinclair said, pausing to take in the shocked look on all of their faces. “I’m pretty sure that counts.”

Raven had to fight not to gasp. The Last Tree was practically a religion on the Ark, with groups from every station making trips once a week to the centre of the station to pay their respects and ‘take the air’. The tree was over a hundred years old, the only thing on the ship that had been alive on the ground, before being brought up to space a few years before the mass exodus from Earth. To think of it dead…

Anger coiled in Raven’s stomach. When Finn had been arrested and sent away, she had gone to the tree a few times. You weren’t allowed to touch it, of course, but she sat as close as possible anyway, just looking at the swirls on the ancient bark, the tangle of branches, the leaves that seemed to stretch and shiver in the air, reaching for the glass dome which let in the much needed sunshine for it to truly thrive. Just being there, smelling the specially fortified dirt, hearing the leaves rustle whenever a blast of air conditioning swept through the room, it, well, it was dumb even thinking it. 

But it grounded her. It reminded her that there was still something out there waiting for them all. She felt small, and her problems seemed to shrink.

And fucking Wells Jaha had tried to kill it.

“The tree’s okay though?” she said, trying to not let her anxiety colour her voice.

“It’s pretty badly scarred, but it won’t die, if that’s what you mean Reyes,” Sinclair answered, a small smile on his face. 

“Good.” 

She turned back to her work, ignoring the muttering and theorising going on around her. She didn’t care, she didn’t care, she didn’t care…

It wasn’t until later that night, when she had collected her pitiful rations and carefully measured water allowance and sat down at her normal table, that she actually paid attention.

“I heard a rumour he did it for a girl,” Murray was saying, waving his fork around in the air as he tried to speak through a mouthful of protein paste.

“That Griffin chick?” Baxter, one of the more charming members of the group said disparagingly. “I heard a rumour that she was a lesbian.”

“Your point being?” Raven challenged him, raising her eyebrows. He made the wise decision to shut up after that.

“No, but even if he didn’t love her, that’s still a pretty ballsy thing to do for a friend,” Calder said thoughtfully, tapping his chin with his forefinger while a lump of beef-flavoured meat replacement substance dripped down his shirt. “He’s basically sacrificing himself to spend a month with her in jail.”

“Not even Reyes would do that,” Wick said from the end of the table. The rest of them went silent. Raven stiffened.

“You might want to shut the hell up, Kyle,” Murray said, his tone mild, but an undercurrent of hostility apparent in the way he was eyeing the scruffy engineer.

Wick held up his hands. “I didn’t mean…”

“To be an asshole? A little late for that, isn’t it?” Raven snapped at him, gathering up her protein packs and striding off, the other guys pleas for her to come back echoing behind her.

She made her way to the pitiful information centre, a barely used cubby hole where you could look up daily Ark statistics and news, and pulled up the day’s news listings. 

Journalism had taken a sharp nosedive in terms of ‘necessity’ on the Ark, so you could usually read the biggest stories on the Ark in less than a minute.

_Wells Jaha, 17, arrested & charged with vandalism and destruction of an Earth monument. Final trial to take place in 212 days._

Raven pushed back from the screen and walked away, her mind a jumble. She thought about Finn, in a cramped cell, waiting to die. She thought about the girl who Jaha had gotten locked up with, and wondered if she was worth it. Would it be worth it, to condemn yourself to die just to see the person you loved once more? Could she ever…

She pushed the thought away. Finn wouldn’t want that for her. He had confessed to her crime to save her, not condemn her to death. 

Maybe that was alright for Wells Jaha, but she wouldn’t have any part of it.

 

iii.

It had been six months, and Raven still couldn’t get over how far away the stars were.

Sitting outside near the campfire, her bad leg propped up on a stool, she stared up at the sky. Tiny pinpricks of light, beaming their way through the atmosphere to reach them all, a motley group of survivors and Grounders, making preparations to sleep. Those pinpricks had gotten to Earth in almost the same way she had.

Arkadia didn’t feel like home in the same way the dropship did, the same way Finn once had, but it was getting better. Now that they had gotten rid of Pike, the community seemed more at peace, with the truce in Polis holding firm. They were taking firmer roots here, beginning to build basic buildings, creating a more permanent stamp on the ground.

Clarke had come back too- much to their surprise. Abby and Kane had made it seem like she was going to stay in Polis forever, with Lexa, but she had shown up during the rebellion, and even when it ended, she stayed. Apparently when Monty had asked her why, she had just said she didn’t want to talk about it. That this was her home and that was the end of it.

She was pretty sure not even Bellamy knew why, but he was the gladdest of them all to see her.

As Raven stretched in her chair and kept her eyes to the heavens, she felt the soft approach of footsteps on her left.

“I don’t feel like talking, just for the record,” she said, not checking to see who it was. Probably Sinclair, about to badger her about a new design he had set up.

“That’s okay, I won’t say much.”

Raven swiveled her head around, watching Clarke as she sat down on a precariously balanced plank of wood and put her head in her hands.

“You alright Griffin?” Raven asked, concern for her- friend? Was that even the right word anymore? - swelling in her chest. 

“Not really, Raven,” Clarke said, sitting up and staring off into the woods with a distant expression.

“Yeah, join the fucking club,” Raven said bitterly, gesturing at her leg- a metaphor for her life in general in this case.

They sat there for a while, two very tired women, with far too many bodies between them. It was hard to believe that only six months ago, she had been in love and Clarke had been in a cell. How times change.

“It’s my best friend’s birthday today,” Clarke said suddenly, still concentrating on the trees. “I only just remembered tonight.”

“Bellamy?” Raven said, confused. “But no one mentioned anything…”

“Not Bell,” Clarke said, shaking her head slowly. “Wells.”

“Jaha’s son?” Raven asked, surprised. When Clarke nodded, she carried on carefully, “Isn’t he the one that…”

“Got stabbed by a thirteen year old,” Clarke said, her voice blank of emotion. “Yeah, that’s the one.”

“Ah,” Raven said. This was the girl who had murdered hundreds, who had mercy-killed the only person in the world that she had ever really loved, who had had a price on her head for being the Commander of Death- and she looked utterly heartbroken. “Do you… what was he like?”

“He was the best person I’ve ever known,” Clarke said, finally turning and looking at Raven, her eyes bright with tears she knew she wouldn’t shed. “He was kind and loyal and all he ever wanted to do was protect people. That’s why he was down here. To protect me.”

She took a deep breath and looked away again, clearly struggling to control her emotions.

Raven felt an intense mix of pity, empathy and hatred as she looked at the girl, who in so many ways, had been the cause of all her pain in the past year. But sitting in front of her, all she saw was someone who had had to deal with too much, too soon. Maybe even more than all of them put together.

“It’s okay,” Raven said finally, reaching out a hand and placing it on Clarke’s shoulder, cautious. “You’re responsible for a lot of bad stuff, but his shouldn’t be on your conscience. Let yourself have this one thing.”

Clarke stiffened, then relaxed into Raven’s touch. Carefully, she placed her own hand on top of hers. 

“Jaha sounded like a good guy,” Raven offered. “And if he loved you enough to come down here to look out for you, I’m sure he wouldn’t want you to beat yourself up like this. Just… think of the good things. It is his birthday after all.”

“He would have been eighteen,” Clarke said softly. 

They sat there for a little while, thinking about their ghosts.

Clarke finally left, squeezing Raven’s hand one last time before heading over to the large tent that she and some of the other Arcadians were bunking in for the night. Raven could make out the dark silhouette of Bellamy, braced against the opening, his tense shoulders releasing as he spotted Clarke heading towards him. The two of them disappeared inside, a careful space between them, and Raven smiled to herself.

Looking back up at the stars, she raised her hand slowly, tracing out the shape of one of her favourite constellations, Pisces. There was a myth that went along with it- she didn’t quite remember the details, Bellamy would probably know, the nerd- but she did know that in order to escape the monster Typhon, Aphrodite and Eros had tied themselves together, desperate to not lose each other in the watery depths.

It reminded her of what she had done for Finn, and Wells had done for Clarke, and Clarke had done for everyone else. Even if it didn’t work in the end, at least they were all together. At least they had all been on this Earth. And maybe that was all they could ask for, in the end.

“Happy birthday, Wells Jaha,” Raven said softly, leaning back and closing her eyes. 

 

iv.

the one time she saw him 

It was a hurried glance, a brief locking of eyes, the most accidental of touches, as Raven was making her way back to Mecha. 

She had spent too long sitting near the tree, watching glimpses of space through the leaves as the more religious of the tree followers said prayers and lit up artificial bulbs that mimicked the look of the candles they had back on Earth. She had nearly fallen asleep there, the monotonous words and the dim lighting lulling her into a tranquil state.

It was only when she overheard one of the followers make a remark about mealtime that her eyes snapped open, and she pushed herself up clumsily, shaking the feeling back into her sleepy legs.

“Stupid, stupid-“ she muttered to herself, picking up her dropped pass and hurrying over to the door, kept vacuum sealed in case of illness or fire. Swiping the holographic lens on her ID over the lock, the door began to swing open with a pneumatic hiss. Impatient, Raven yanked at the outside handle, only to find her hand meeting something warm and soft instead.

Startling, she jumped backwards, away from the boy who had apparently been as impatient to get in as she had been to get out. 

“Sorry!” he said, eyes skipping over her as he craned her neck past her, trying to see into the room. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Raven said, her heart pounding with adrenaline as she took a step back and let him pass.

“Thanks,” he said as he moved past her, eyes locking with her, a troubled smile on his face as he nodded in acknowledgement. 

It was only then that Raven recognised him, the dark skin and chiselled features of the Chancellor stretched across a kinder, more open face. He had the same eyes though, piercing in their gaze. But unlike the Chancellor, his weren’t threatening, or full of false sympathy. He just looked sad.

As he walked away, Raven’s eyes stayed on him a while longer. He had a hunch to his shoulders, but he had purpose as he walked and stood in front of the tree, his face raised to the dome as weak light filtered in.

Raven turned away, and didn’t give it another thought. Her mind was on other things now, like the approaching dinner, the earful she was going to get from Sinclair tomorrow, the prospect of another lonely night sleeping in whatever room Nygel had found for her.

Wells Jaha stood alone, an illegally bought lighter in one pocket, a knife in the other.

It was time to help his best friend.

 

“There are those we pass like ships in the night, who we meet for a moment, then sail out of sight with never a backward glance of regret; folks we know briefly, then quickly forget.”

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, that was in my brain. I really resent all the potential Wells Jaha didn't get to realise and all the pain that Raven Reyes has to go through, I wish it could have been different, I really do.
> 
> The end quote is from an anonymous source, I literally just googled 'quotes about ships in the night'.
> 
> Happy reading!


End file.
